The Global Digital Payment Revolution Is Now and Asia is Leading The World

Tokenized cash is coming, but is my tokenized dollar the same as yours?

Robert Delaunay, 1930, Circular Forms. Robert Delaunay chose the view into the ambulatory of the Parisian Gothic church Saint-Séverin as the subject of his first series of paintings, in which he charted the modulations of light streaming through the stained-glass windows. The paintings marked his transition to cubism.

Thanks for reading the “Cashless” newsletter, an insider’s view on Asia’s fintech, CBDC, and AI for anyone striving to understand “the Asia Century.” I’m Rich Turrin, and these are my hard-hitting insights designed to educate and inform. Subscribe to get these emerging trends directly in your inbox every Sunday. Every week I scan thousands of articles to find only the best and most valuable for you. Subscribe to get my expertly curated news straight to your inbox each week. Free is good but paid is better.

Topics:

• The Global Digital Payment Revolution Is Now: APAC Leads The World

• How Mobile Wallets Fuel Southeast Asia’s $325 Billion E-Commerce Surge

• Tokenized Money: "Tomorrow belongs to those who can hear it coming."

• Tokenization Beyond the Hype: No Standardization, No Disruption

• The Truth About AI In Finance: Blind Faith in Black Boxes

• Bonus Read: 50 Megatrends and Future Opportunities That Will Change our World

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Welcome back!

This week, we’ve got statistics that show how Asia is leading the world in digital payments. In two separate reports, we see how Asia’s transition to real-time digital payments is fundamentally changing the region.

Our lead story shows how APAC once again takes the global lead in digital payments. These insights come from the just-published Worldpay Global Payments Report, which is the best of its kind. I look forward to it every year, and I hope you enjoy it!

We follow up on that story with a great report showing how digital wallets have fueled the e-commerce markets throughout Southeast Asia. This report confirms Worldpay's results and provides greater detail.

The report provides more granular statistics showing how card-based payments lost any chance of being the dominant payment method in Southeast Asia. Cards are even losing out in their regional strongholds, Singapore and Hong Kong.

Next we look again at tokenized money, and if you’ve not been paying attention to this trend, it’s time. With the US pushing stablecoins and new laws on the table, tokenized payments will be a reality sooner than you think.

What most don’t “hear coming” is that tokenized money will change not just bank and corporate IT platforms but also their business models.

The next article shows how despite the hype, tokenization isn’t always easy. There will be no disruption without token standardization and the guarantee that my token is the same as yours. This is a serious problem, though for once I am optimistic.

Are we putting blind faith in AI black boxes? This report asks one of the most important questions of our new AI era: Is it more important to protect the public interest or the profitability and productivity of financial service providers?

Finally, I’ve attached two great reports from the Dubai Future Foundation: 50 Megatrends and 50 Future Opportunities. These reports show where we’re going in the future.

Thanks once again for reading. I appreciate each and every one of you opening your inbox for me!

Rich

PS

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The Global Digital Payment Revolution Is Now: APAC Leads The World

Digital payments are taking over the world. Digital spending in e-commerce and at the POS grew from $1.7 trillion in 2014 to $18.7 trillion globally in 2024, a nearly eleven-fold increase.

Once again, APAC is the global leader in digital payment adoption…..

Download this great report and read more: HERE

How Mobile Wallets Fuel Southeast Asia’s $325 Billion E-Commerce Surge

Southeast Asia is the fifth-largest economy in the world, and its growing use of digital payments is fueling an e-commerce revolution with 137% growth predicted in 5 years.

In 2023, digital payments were already behind 87% of SEA’s $137bn e-commerce market, that figure will grow to …..

See why cards are in trouble in the region: HERE

Tokenized Money: "Tomorrow belongs to those who can hear it coming."

Tokenized money is coming. Can you hear it? David Bowie’s quote is as poignant today as ever.

Tokenized money is the sound of the future, and with all that is happening from the digital euro to the US’s new love of stablecoins, it’s obvious that big changes are coming.

Read why this is a gamechanger: HERE

Tokenization Beyond the Hype: No Standardization, No Disruption

PwC and Nethermind go beyond the tokenization hype to tackle standardization and address the fundamental problem that tokenization isn’t going anywhere unless my tokens are the same as yours.

See why how many decimals a contract has is already a problem: HERE

The Truth About AI In Finance: Blind Faith in Black Boxes

Is it more important to protect the public interest or the profitability and productivity of financial service providers?

Will you put your faith in black boxes run by big tech and banks? Read more: HERE

Bonus Read: 50 Megatrends and Future Opportunities That Will Change our World

50 Megatrends and Future Opportunities (Two reports one PDF)

32.3MB ∙ PDF file

Download

These are TWO great reports by the Dubai Future Foundation that look at Megatrends and Future Opportunities. Note that two PDFs are combined into one download. The megatrends report focuses on the big picture of how our world is changing, creating the future opportunities, which are covered in the second report. The Dubai Future Foundation nails it: "In thinking about the future over the next few decades, the Dubai Future Foundation sees one that is highly varied, changing both rapidly and unevenly, with global trends affecting different people and places in different ways. How the next half-century will unfold is impossible for us to imagine." But this is KEY: "Our conceptions of growth, prosperity and well-being may evolve. However, people’s basic human needs and higher-order motivations, the human nature in which we are rooted, will endure."

Download

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Each week, I distill this ocean of information into five concise, high-value reports, sharing the most essential knowledge you need to stay ahead.

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• Future of AI

• Hyperconnected Digital Trust and AI

• How People Pay

• Fast Payments for LatAm and the Caribbean

• Interlinking fast payment systems

• Hong Kong’s Fintech Ecosystem

• Chart of the day: Share of e-commerce payment methods in APAC

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